Keller said he believed the Bush White House is on a campaign to intimidate the press.

CIA Director Porter Goss has expressed great displeasure with articles published last year in the Times that broke the news that the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance program inside the U.S. was being used to monitor phone calls and other communications possibly linked to terrorists.

“I’m not sure journalists fully appreciate the threat confronting us. The Times in the eavesdropping case, the Post for its CIA prison stories, and everyone else who has tried to look behind the war on terror. … There’s sometimes a vindictive tone in the way [administration officials] talk about dragging reporters before grand juries and in the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors.”